History has proven that weapons are not only dangerous to the enemy but also the own troops due to accidental firing of weapons or of ammunition and missiles. Such accidental firing can be caused of collisions between weapon loaded vehicles or air planes, impact forces from projectiles hitting the weapon, etc. For this reason, modern weapons, ammunition and missiles should be designed to withstand certain accidental events without appreciable risk for personnel present in the area of accident. Certain standard tests have been set for testing weapons, ammunition and missiles to determine if these fulfil safety criteria in this respect. Examples of such tests are “Bullet impact test”, “Fragment impact test”, “Fast Cook-off Test” and “Slow Cook-off Test”. If those tests show that a weapon system tested acts within acceptable limits, such a system is classified as an Insensitive Munition (IM) weapon system. It has been estimated that if the weapon systems on four aircraft carrier, on which accidents occurred in 1966, 1967, 1969 and 1981, respectively, had been IM weapon systems the loss of personnel had been reduced from 220 to 72 and the number of injured had been reduced from 709 to 161. It is thus very important that modern weapon systems are constructed also with regard to IM requirements.
The objective of the present invention is to solve the problem of making a weapon having a barrel or launch tube and a projectile preloaded therein capable of being subjected to overheat in case of a fire accident, which means that said weapon should pass the “Fast Cook-off Test” and “Slow Cook-off Test” mentioned above.